Born in London, England, Amanpour was raised in Tehran. Her father, Mahmoud Amanpour, is a Muslim from Iran; her mother, Patricia Hill, is a Christian from England. She is fluent in English and Persian.
After completing the larger part of her elementary education in Iran, she was sent by her parents to boarding school in England when she was 11. She attended Holy Cross Convent, an all-girls school located in Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire, and then, at age 16, New Hall School, in Chelmsford, Essex. Christiane and her family returned to England not long after the Islamic Revolution began. She has stressed that they were not forced to leave the country, but were actually returning to England due to the Iran–Iraq War. The family ultimately remained in England, finding it difficult to return to Iran.
After leaving New Hall, Amanpour moved to the United States to study journalism at the University of Rhode Island's Harrington School of Communication and Media. During her time there, she worked in the news department at WBRU-FM in Providence, Rhode Island. She also worked for NBC affiliate WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island, as an electronic graphics designer. In 1983, Amanpour graduated from the university summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. degree in journalism.
In 1983, she was hired by CNN on the foreign desk in Atlanta, Georgia, as an entry-level desk assistant. During her early years as a correspondent, Amanpour was given her first major assignment covering the Gulf War, which led to her being transferred in 1986 to Eastern Europe to report on the fall of European communism. In 1989, she was assigned to work in Frankfurt, Germany, where she reported on the democratic revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe at the time. Through this position, she was able to move up in the company and by 1990 served as a correspondent for CNN's New York bureau.